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Sanofi closes deal on Acambis

Sanofi-Aventis closes on its deal to buy Acambis today, but it's working hard to avoid losing the entrepreneurial spirit that attracted the French pharma company to the vaccine developer in the first place.

Wayne Pisano, who runs Sanofi's vaccine arm, says that Acambis would be kept at arm's length with a minimum of bureaucratic controls to slow it down. But Pisano also conceded that fostering a small-company development mentality in a big pharma subsidiary would prove to be a challenge.

But Sanofi definitely plans to grow Acambis. Pisano plans to finance new acquisitions as well as new development work for a general flu vaccines, Japanese encephalitis, West Nile and dengue fever.